handmade to last generations

At Earlywood, making the best kitchen utensils and wooden spoons is not good enough. We meticulously design each tool in hopes that the craft, intention, and love we put into our work transpires to your culinary experience. Whether you are a home cook preparing quesadillas for the under five crowd or a seasoned chef serving sous vide, Earlywood's wooden kitchen utensils suggest culinary intention that makes every part of every meal just a little bit better.

Our Mission: To craft wooden utensils that infuse your culinary experience with warmth and sentiment for generations to come.

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Handcrafted in Red Lodge, MT since 2010

Founded in 2010 at the base of the Beartooth Mountains in south-central Montana, Earlywood produces a growing suite of kitchen utensils characterized by their durability, minimalism, and spare elegance. True meditations on design, each Earlywood product is crafted from the finest hardwoods to meet rigorous, utilitarian standards. Quality and function are at the helm of our product ethos guiding each decision we make. Whether we're considering wood type, lines or dimensions, we find simple is quite often the best.

Video transcription:

I don't make wooden spoons that look like wooden spoons, because wooden spoons have always looked like wooden spoons. (laughs) That's not a good enough reason to make wooden spoon to look like a spoon.

My name is Brad Bernhart and I'm the owner and maker here at Earlywood, where I design and make heirloom quality wooden kitchen utensils. I strive for quality in every single aspect of what we do, I mean with wood choice, the designs that I've come up with. If it doesn't meet my standards I don't let it get out of here.

I'm a mechanical engineer by trade and by train, when I design a product I start with a function that I want the product to be able to handle and I design around the function and whatever the product ends up looking like that's what it looks like. Like if I'm at home cooking a meal I try to step out of the meal and look at it from my analytical engineering side that I've learned from years of being a design engineer. You know whether it's this little tiny corner sharp or they have a tiny radius or how thick is it , how does it feel in your hand. So many things you can think about. I like a more minimalist kind of modern simple thing with tight straight grain that comes across in the woods I've chosen and the design of the products that I make. A lot of them are just really simple and simple is quite often the best, you know.

There is a lot of ways that heirloom quality comes across my products. They're made to last generations that's what it comes down to. I love making products that are going to stick around that long and I know how people love a wooden spoon and just cherish it. And it's like one of their favorite things in the kitchen. And I just love the idea that this stuff's gonna be around that long, people are gonna love it that much. All the colors you see on the words are just their natural colors, Bloodwood, Mexican Ebony Jatobá and Hard Maple, so I don't color the wood at all I just soak them in a bath of clear food-safe mineral oil and that just enhances their natural color.

When I sell a spoon and you know it's a really satisfying feeling just to know that there's all these people out there getting these things I've designed and I've worked on it makes you it was just perfect before they left here. And it's just a good feeling to know that those things are going into their lives and they get to enjoy them.

"This kitchen tool is perfect for anyone who cooks. At all. Even a little."